Brockville City Council Tables 2025 Budget in Three Meetings This Week

Brockville – City Council began budget deliberations with three separate meetings this week to discuss proposed figures for the 2025 Operational, Capital and Community Partners budgets, totalling approximately $44 million.

A Budget Book is being used to present the 2025 Budget which includes various sections and highlights and is meant to tell the story behind the figures. The Budget Book can be found here!

The city says that the proposed budget takes a prudent approach to maintaining current service levels while recovering from the previous year’s challenges such as economic conditions and staff vacancies.

Staff explained to Council that an attempt has been made to balance current service levels, aging infrastructure needs, funding opportunities and tax levy increases while aligning with Council’s approved strategic priorities.

Like all municipalities in Ontario, the City is required to balance its operating budget each year and to do this, the municipality balances increases in property taxes and manages expenses by adapting and reducing the cost of programs and services.

In opening remarks, City Manager Sandra MacDonald provided some information regarding funding sources and the particular challenges associated with this year’s budget.

She explained that the City owns infrastructure assets including water, wastewater, roads, bridges, facilities, and parks with a value of approximately $750 million. She noted municipalities across Canada continue to struggle with adequately funding infrastructure, referring to a report from the Federation of Canadian Municipalities which indicates that municipalities build and maintain 60% of the core public infrastructure but only receive 9% of each tax dollar raised by higher levels of government to maintain these assets.

In addition to capital demands, the City Manager highlighted operational challenges and noted City staffing levels have decreased by approximately 40 positions since 2004 despite increasing service levels as new initiatives have come under the responsibility of the municipality.

She also noted that even though there has been a drop in staff positions, the demand for current staff has continued to increase due to the aforementioned increases in service levels and new initiatives, rising expectations of residents and the significant burden of provincial reporting.

Following more than 10 hours of discussion this week, staff will be incorporating feedback and direction from Council into a second version of the 2025 Budget for further consideration at the Council meeting on January 28, 2025.